books.google.com - East meets West in acclaimed author Gina B. Nahai's mesmerizing story of a journalist on a search for the truth about his father's death -- and his own past -- among the mystical, snake-handling Holy Rollers of Appalachia. When Adam Watkins, illegitimate son of ninety-year-old preacher Little Sam Jenkins,...http://books.google.com/books/about/Sunday_s_Silence.html?id=QNZd80Sce-8C&utm_source=gb-gplus-shareSunday's Silence

Sunday's Silence: A Novel

East meets West in acclaimed author Gina B. Nahai's mesmerizing story of a journalist on a search for the truth about his father's death -- and his own past -- among the mystical, snake-handling Holy Rollers of Appalachia. When Adam Watkins, illegitimate son of ninety-year-old preacher Little Sam Jenkins, learns that his father has died from a snakebite and that a woman named Blue, a fellow handler, is being charged with murder, Adam abandons his assignment in Lebanon and goes home for the first time in twenty years. Almost immediately, he is drawn into a dark and exhilarating relationship with the purple-eyed beauty Blue. Carried to Appalachia from the mountains of Asia as the child bride of a languages professor, she is both outsider and enigma. Through Blue's and Adam's interwoven stories, Nahai brings to life a land of stunning beauty and heartrending poverty and explores both the triumph of passion over reason and the cross-cultural mysteries of faith.

About the author (2003)

Gina B. Nahai has lived in Iran, Switzeland, and the United States. She is the author of the award-winning and internationally praised Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith. A frequent lecturer on Iranian-Jewish history and the topic of exile, she has studied the politics of Iran for the U.S. Department of Defense.